Temari's Boutique
by NoLogique
Summary: When Temari's apartment burns down, she moves into her brother's place, where she meets weirdos, freaks and discovers kinks. AU, incest, etc.
1. Chapter 1

1

Temari, seated on the train, told herself not to cry.

I'm not going to cry, she thought; if I don't cry then I can get off this train, look up at the sky and think, _Well, at least I have my dignity_. If I cry, I won't even have that. All I have is my dignity. Well, that and a tiny overnight bag my brother had to e-mail me money to pay for.

Gaara would be waiting at the other end of the line and it was going to be the first time seeing him in nearly five years. They were both twenty-four now, and he had just been a scrawny kid before.

Temari had hoped he would have had some encouraging words for her when he called her, but had just told her where he'd be and when. Temari had to do the encouraging herself: _I will get through this_, she thought; _I will pull myself up, finish my degree, get my own place, live life to the fullest_. That was the plan.

Turning her head slightly, feeling hungover and woozy, she looked out the window and watched the trees shoot by. In her ears, she heard her roommate screaming as the ashes of their lives coiled up into the night sky.

"_I didn't do it!"_ In the flashing of the fire truck lights, her roommate's face looked demonic, twisted and angry. "_I didn't do it! I didn't do it!_"

All my stuff, Temari thought; gone in a fire. And no tenant insurance to speak of.

A day later, she got a call from the landlord, and yes, indeedy, the roommate _had_ done it, had set a frying pan on fire and, in a panic, tipped the thing into the recycling bin. Instead of calling anyone or dousing the flames, she had ran out of the apartment and gone to a McDonalds to wait it out. But she had to come back eventually, and had come back just as Temari had returned from work to find her life gone up in smoke.

And so soon after her nervous breakdown, too...

"I know you're fragile," Gaara had said on the phone. "Things will be quiet here. The guys here... they're pretty chill."

So out of the boonies Temari went, away from her rural university town, and into the city. As the train began to thread its way past towering industrial centers, the sky went grey and it began to rain.

Jesus fucking Christ, Temari thought; this has been a bad couple of days.

In the station, the crowd jostled her, and she only caught glimpses of the city past the fluttering arms and legs around her. As with any long time travelling, the next few minutes were conducted somewhat automatically, going through the motions in a daze. Down the escalator, past the little blue booths with other people waiting to leave, out into a large mezzanine... where was she supposed to be again?

"Temari," someone said.

"Oh thank god," she hissed, setting her bag down on the floor. It felt like she was dropping a great stone, or removing a huge responsibility. Slowly unwinding the scarf from around her head, she turned to look at the brother she hadn't seen or spoken to in five years.

"Goodness," she said.

She would be lying if she said she wasn't surprised at his appearance. She'd seen a few blurry pictures on the internet of him at parties, but of course, seeing people in the flesh was different. Strangely, she felt that similar vague disappointment that you feel when you wait for a blind date and realize they look totally different than what you'd expected them to look.

With the sort of intensity and violent vibrancy he'd had as a child, she'd have thought he'd have gotten taller or broader. Instead he was only about a foot taller than her and slender. He was broad-shouldered only so much that it was noticeable rather than any aesthetic asset. He was slightly baby-faced, with hair the kind of red that must have been dyed, but not too recently, as it was somewhat faded and some roots were visible. He had the tiny little pert nose that Temari had, and deep dark bags around his eyes.

Jesus, Gaara, she thought; don't you ever sleep?

"It's good to see you," he said, and came up and hugged her.

She hugged him back, first mechanically, because that was what you did when people hugged you, and then properly, realizing she was grateful for the hug, that she'd needed a hug lately.

"Things'll be okay," he said.

Okay, she thought; he _does_ understand.

"Yeah, I know," she said, pulling back from the hug and looking at him. "But thanks for helping me out anyways."

2

She watched him sink the keys into the apartment lock, and looked at his place. She had, honestly, expected better. It was an ancient three story house out in the student ghetto just north of the downtown core. The first floor was a drug paraphenalia/sex store run by a big, leathery woman named Sharth, and Gaara and his roommates lived on the third. The inside stairwell had a huge hole in it, so they had to clamber up the rusting fire escape in the middle of the rain. The wind had picked up, and the rain had gone sideways in an attempt to bypass Gaara's umbrella.

Temari felt like laughing. Didn't Gaara have an all right job? Why did he live in such a shithole?

Gaara was struggling with the keys. The lock was old, the keys were old. So it goes.

"I forget, Gaara," Temari said. "Where're you working these days?"

"Nowhere special. Doing the waiter thing, a shitty diner downtown."

"Having trouble with the door?"

"This fucking thing. This always happens. I think it might be Naruto doing it."

"Naruto?"

"My roommate. He's got this thing about locking and double-locking the doors and really, really, you know, _locking_ the doors."

Eventually Gaara ended up banging on the door, loudly. At first, there was no response. He smirked at Temari and said, "I'm thinking of getting a tattoo."

Temari tried to smile. We're getting _soaked_ out here, she thought. "Yeah? What of?"

"Japanese character right on my forehead." He tapped just above his eyebrow. "Thinking of getting 'love' there."

"What, and screw up your chances of ever getting a good job again?"

"Price you have to pay." He banged on the door again.

This time the door opened. The smell of old weed and dust hit Temari's noise, and a shabby, blond haired kid stood there, looking at her with shining eyes. At first she was dumbfounded, seeing this young man. He looked the way she imagined a saint would look, filled with the fire of something beyond the earth. He glowed with the ferver of a prophet. She had never seen anything like him before.

"Naruto," Gaara said, "come on. It's _raining_."

"Sorry," Naruto said, shaking his head. "Thought you'd be back later, Gaara. Is this your-- this is your sister, yeah?"

Gaara introduced them and asked if Anko was home. Naruto said she wasn't, then shuffled back into his room and closed the door.

"Yes, I understand," Gaara said to Temari, taking her inside. "It's not much of a place, but the rent's good and it's close to work."

No, Temari thought; this _isn't _that bad of a place. In fact, people who weren't the current tenants could really make something out of this.

She'd been in places like this before, typically in houses or apartments owned by students. They didn't feel like _homes_, in any real sense, and any attempt at decoration came from a motivation more to do with tradition than any personal preference. These apartments and homes were in-between-places, just a room for someone to stay as they studied classes or worked to save up. Places like this just didn't _feel_ right; rather, they felt almost like the parody of a house, or some creature trying to look like a house in order to trap prey.

But no, beyond that, it wasn't too bad. Hardwood floors extended out into a common room with furniture that looked like it had all been picked up off of sidewalks, a battered coffee table with weed crumbled over a mirror, a tiny but bright kitchen, a tiny bathroom and three bedrooms.

Temari said, "Listen, Gaara, I know what you said on the phone about giving me your bed, and you wouldn't listen to me tell you to go fuck yourself, but I want to tell you now."

"To go fuck myself?"

"Bingo. I'm on the couch."

"I think it'd be selfish of me not to offer you the bed."

"No, it's selfish of _me_ to take the couch. If I didn't, I'd just feel bad about this whole thing. So I'm making _you _feel bad about not giving me the bed instead."

"Fine, all right."

"What time is it?"

"Still early. Why?"

She nodded and set her bag down on the couch. I am _determined_, she thought; _determined_ to make life work for me this time. "That means there's still time for me to go look for a job."

3

Looking for a job in the middle of March always was easier said than done. Most seasonal jobs didn't start until April or June, and jobs held by students wouldn't open until the same tme. There was also the confusing nature of the city itself. It felt like what Temari called a _patchwork city_; that is, a series of neighbourhoods that seemed like they were cobbled together from different cities. She handed resumes out to a coffee shop in an area that looked like it was from a quaint, artsy tourist town, begged for a job at a political bookstore in a neighbour populated completely by extremely affluent yuppies living in gigantic houses, and tried for a bartending position in a bar situated in an area that looked like a nightmare painting of a downtown district, with wires hanging low over cracked pavement, and an El-Train shuddering overhead on rusty supports.

The guy running the bar was tall and slender, his hair tied up, with dreadlocks coming out vertically over his head. His skin was pleasantly dark, and while he looked a bit like a granola kid, he was also pleasantly muscular. He introduced himself as Shikamaru, but grinned sheephishly and confided in her that unless one of the other girls quit, there weren't a lot of hours for someone new.

"Crap," Temari said, "and this place is close to where I'm staying, too."

"If anything changes..." He grinned at her attractively and shrugged. "I mean, why not? We'll keep your resume on file."

"Thanks."

"Listen." He put on a face that Temari had seen pop onto other people's faces a lot; He had realized he had a potential audience. "You like music, right? Course you do. I play in a band." He produced a small, cheaply printed card from behind the bar and handed it to her. "We're playing tomorrow, if you want to come."

"Your band's called the _Hardcore Pufnstufs_?"

"No, we're opening for them. We're _Dead Lesbian Desires._" He shrugged. "The name wasn't my idea. I just play in it."

"What do you play?"

"Bass."

"Maybe I'll come."

She pocketed the card and thought, Fuck. None of these places look very promising, and I need a job, like, _now_.

4

Temari smirked, reached into the messenger bag Gaara had lent her and fingered her last resume. She stood under the twisted tree that grow out of the crumbling sidewalk outside of Gaara's building. The head shop/porn store was called the _Fetish Boutique_, and Temari figured it was worth a try. She liked the way it advertised its products. A lot of porn/sex shops she'd seen covered up their windows, or displayed some of their more tasteful negligees. Here, though, in one grimy window were several smoke-glass bongs and pipes, and in the other were several brightly coloured dildos. This place looks brilliant, she thought.

As she reached for the door, Naruto materialized from the side of the building, looking bright-eyed and over-focused in his orange windbreaker.

"Are you going in there?" he asked.

"Yeah, I was thinking about it."

"Mind if I come in with you?"

Surprised at the question, she said, "No, not at all."

"You might need some protection."

She wasn't entirely sure what to think about that, so she opened the door and went in. There was an old-fashioned sound of a bell as she stepped into the thickly saccharine smell of incense. Okay, she thought; Jesus, maybe I _can't_ work here. Too much incense makes for a headachey day, but maybe if I stand here long enough I'll get used to it.

Otherwise it was a pretty interesting looking shop. A glass counter running along the east wall displayed pipes and hookas and bongs, and behind on shelves were sealed pornographic magazines and erotica. No sign of Miss Sharth anywhere. At the back were other books, and glass diplays of vibrators, dildos, beads and other toys. There was the ubiquitous mannequin in the corner, wearing bondage gimp gear.

This looks, Temari thought, like it would be a hilarious place to work.

Naruto meanwhile, stepped forward and sniffed the air, cocking his head back and forth almost like a bird.

A loud voice, then, snapping like a whip: "_What _are you doing here?"

Temari jumped, and saw Sharth emerge from a doorway of hanging beads to come out. She was a big woman, and she struck Temari as a probable solid dominatrix. She was glaring at Naruto, but the expression softened when she saw Temari.

"He with you?" she asked.

"He's--" Temari thought for a second how to phrase it, then gave up. "Yeah, I guess he's with me?"

"Okay." She gave her an arch smile, tinged with a kind of nasty hostility that Temari didn't fail to pick up on. "But he's _your_ responsibility." Her expression softened further and the hostility vanished. "Anything in particular you looking for?'

"Actually--" Temari reached for her resume, and paused, realizing she might be in over her head. Small stores like these rarely could afford to hire help, but-- it was worth a try, wasn't it? "Actually, I was wondering if you were hiring."

Sharth glanced quickly at Naruto, who had tensed up, staring at her like he was expecting her to strike him. She looked at Temari, scrutinized her, then said, "You a New Romantic?"

The phrase was meaningless. Temari blinked, trying to process the question. "Sorry?"

"Sorry, hon, you just strike me as someone part of a musical social movement."

"Oh. Well. I tried to be punk, once, a long time ago."

"How punk?"

Temari shrugged. "Washed my hair with soap for a while, lived in the back seat of a guy's car." She shook her head. "Don't know. Tried the whole works."

Sharth peered at her sharply, then said, "Ask me tomorrow, sweetie. Might have something for you then."

A tall thin bald man shuffled into the shop, dressed in a long shabby trenchcoat. His ears were huge, and his eyes small but bulging, the sides of his hair greying. He murmured something at Sharth, obviously intimidated by Temari and Naruto's presence.

"Of course, honey," Sharth said, coming out from behind the counter. "Come on back." To Temari, she said, "Tomorrow, sweetie. Ask me tomorrow."

She and the thin man vanished behind the beads.

"This is one of the places," Naruto said to Temari. "I think they're trying to come through here but I can't prove it. I tried e-mailing the government about it, but when I did, one of the Vancouver planes fell into the Pacific, so I think they're trying to suppress me. It would explain the time fluctuations."

Temari stared at him.

"Believe it," he said.

5

"So," Temari said to Gaara later that night, "_what's_ with your roommate Naruto?"

They were sitting on Gaara's bed, drinking beers, a mixed tape of some Clash B-sides playing on Gaara's stereo. The rain had started _really_ pouring about an hour ago, and the wind was clattering against the window. Temari felt safe and warm in Gaara's room.

He ruffled his hair and looked up at her, annoyed. "Has he not been taking his medication?"

"Ah, I _knew_ he had something wrong with him."

"What'd he say to you?"

"Is he schizophrenic?"

Gaara shrugged. "I don't know. Kid's had a shitty life. You know, parents dead, out on the streets for a while, foster home to foster home, apparently thought he was a, I don't know, a _fox_ or something for some of it. I don't know. The medicine's supposed to control it."

"Maybe he's not taking it."

"What can I do? I'm just the roommate."

Three beers in, combined with an alternative, acoustic version of "Guns of Brixton" coming on the stereo, and Gaara mentioned Kankuro, just like Temari thought he would. Neither of them had seen their brother for six years.

"Haven't heard from him at all," Temari said. "I think he refuses to talk to the family."

"Can't see why," Gaara said.

"No?"

"I mean, I don't know--"

The conversation turned to family, and Temari realized that Gaara was one of those people who talked about their abusive childhood seemingly without any inclination or belief that it had been abusive. She watched him smile and relate stories of events dripping with neglect and punishment. By the end of the fifth beer, she was having a hard time resisting the urge to grab his shoulders and shake him and shout, _Gaara! Our father practically tried to kill us!_

But a fun night drinking beers shouldn't turn into a sob session, she thought; that was the great danger of alcohol. When you're emotional you're always standing on the threshold of becoming a weepy drunk, and weepy drunks are the worst drunks of all.

As he went up to change the tape, Temari walked out into the hall to search for the bathroom. She paused by the door as she stood in the darkness, hearing noises coming from the room of the third roommate, Anko. It was a universal sound, signifying one thing in all languages: the rhythmic creaking of a mattress, the tensed, almost anguished noises coming from her, and shorter, clipped grunts from someone deeper-voiced, someone male. Anko was having fun tonight, apparently. Temari laughed, feeling like a voyeur. She reached out for the bathroom light, flicked it.

The sudden orange light revealed Naruto, standing in the kitchen, looking at Temari.

"Jesus," Temari hissed. "You scared the crap out of me."

"Oh!" Naruto said, looking genuinely surprised. "I'm sorry."

He had a drink in his hand, and Temari immediately expelled the notion that he was up to something crazy. When you lived in a place long enough you could go wandering into the kitchen in the night in the complete darkness to get a drink without that being weird. Still, they just stared at each other, as the sounds of Anko getting flattened into her mattress got louder and louder.

"Think she's faking it?" Temari asked.

Naruto smirked, then laughed a little. "Who knows?"

The furnace turned on, and the white noise of the heat didn't do much to tone the noise down.

"I like you," Naruto said.

"Oh," Temari said, staring to feel antsy. She really had to pee.

"You haven't been taken over by them. Your aura is free. They use mosquitos sometimes, you know, to transmit the stem cell fitted with the controlling virus. If you've been bitten, your aura turns purple."

From the room, Anko moaned, "Ohh... ohhh _god_..."

Oh god, Temari thought. "I'll look out for that, then," she said, then escaped into the bathroom, making sure to lock the door.

Back in Gaara's room, she grabbed another beer and said, "Your roommate's loud."

Gaara looked up from the bed, in the process of leaning back against a pillow. "Anko? Yeah." He started to laugh. "Just a little bit."

"That happen every night?"

"With Anko? No, she doesn't have people over often, but when she does, she's got mad volume."

"Sounds like she puts on a show."

Gaara threw up his hands, grinning. "Not my place to comment."

He reached for another beer and knocked a photograph off his desk. Temari was the first to it, snatching it up before he had a chance to. Looking at him yank himself back to a sitting position, she realized he was a lot drunker than she was.

But of _course _I have a better alcohol tolerance, she thought; after I dropped out, I spent every night face deep in a bottle of something or other. When I started gaining weight, I drank. When I lost weight, I drank.

Shoving the thought aside, she looked at the photograph and was stunned to see it was of the three of them, young preteen Gaara, Temari and Kankuro. They were out on the grass, obviously at high noon, because the colours were washed out, and parts of it were over-exposed, as most summer family photos were. Gaara had a strained smile on, but Temari and Kankuro had on bright, oblivious grins.

It's so easy to read new meanings onto old photographs, she thought; interpreting expressions retroactively. Did we know what our childhood was like back then, or were we still in denial?

She wondered if Gaara was still in denial, if that was how he coped. Kankuro coped by withdrawing entirely from the family. Temari had coped by completely fucking over her own life. No coping mechanism seemed perfect, and they were still all fucked up.

She noticed, however, how plain Gaara was in the photograph, how much the adult Gaara had lost the baby fat, had grown into his features. She looked at him and saw how attractive he'd gotten.

Fuck it was hot in the room, she thought. "Why is it so hot in here?" she said.

Gaara closed his eyes. "Landlord pays for the heat," he said, as if that explained anything. After a moment, he said, "I think I'm fading, Temari."

"Me too."

The stereo stopped playing music, and over the silence, Temari could vaguely hear Anko's sex noises. She and Gaara started laughing, but when the sudden image of handsome adult Gaara slamming _her _into the matress popped into her head, she suddenly stopped.

Great, she thought; my own head is trying to freak me out.

"Yeah," Gaara said, shutting his eyes. "I'm taking."

"Good call," Temari said.

Feeling too tired to crawl out to the couch, where she'd have to listen to more of Anko, she leaned forward and lay down next to her brother. He smelled good, like _really_ good, and she realized her heart was beating too fast.

Stop that, she admonished herself; my brain has a bizarre sense of humour.

She knew she was deprived, because of course that night she had a sex dream. She was on all fours, wearing nothing but the school uniform she used to own before the fire, sucking Shikamaru off. The other band members of _Dead Lesbian Desires_ were taking turns fucking her, and they were all tall, generically handsome dudes with tattoos, because she had no idea what they actually looked like.

"C'mon," she was murmuring, "c'mon..."

She looked up, but it wasn't Shikamaru any more. It was Gaara, his mouth open, his little pink tongue resting on his lips, eyes smoldering.

She didn't come all that hard, but hard enough to make her feel ashamed.

When she woke up, she told herself she'd better sort her goddamn life out. She walked down the fire escape to the sex store and asked Sharth if there was a job available.

The big woman looked at her, smiled, and said, yes, she _could_ use some help around the store.


	2. Chapter 2

1

Booze fucked with the deeper sleep patterns. Yes, when you were good and drunk you were more likely to fall asleep, but when that wore off, all that was left was a screwed-up night of sleep. When Temari drank, which was often, she tended to bounce horribly awake around 6:30, clutching her head in pain, and then try to get back to sleep. This morning it wasn't working. She was staying awake, and the pain had settled in.

Everyone experienced hangovers differently. As she pulled herself through the darkened hall, hearing the rain clatter against the windows, she felt her stomach churn with nausea and two slugs behind her eyeballs twist around. This is what beer did to her. If it had been wine, it would've just been the stomach, with less input from the slugs. With vodka, she probably would've just woken up with a garden variety headache. There was so little to vodka; why hadn't last night been vodka?

But there had been a lot about the other night that had been a disaster.

There was a tall white boy in the kitchen, shirtless and wearing long flannel pants. As Temari came in, he was rifling through the cupboards looking for cups. She assumed this was Anko's boyfriend, the one with whom she was making so much noise last night and the night before. Later Gaara would reveal to her that it was actually Paul, Anko's ex-boyfriend.

Not wanting to deal with anyone, Temari slunk back towards the couch, determined to try hard to fall asleep.

Shikamaru's band had kinda sucked. The drinking had kinda sucked. And now this hangover completely sucked. She told herself to spend the day recuperating and hydrating. Shoving herself farther into the couch and covering herself with a blanket, she shut her eyes, trying to force herself to think calming and sleep-inducing thoughts. That will appease the eye-slugs, she thought; a nice sleep.

Through the wall, she heard Anko snap loudly and angrily at Paul. What the fuck? Temari said, rolling over onto her side, feeling the grand hangover sickness raise its ugly head once adain. Why now? What lunatic couple would argue at six in the morning?

Six-forty-five now. Obviously Paul had had enough. Temari had snapped her blanket over her head, but she perfectly heard Paul thunder out of the room, snatching up his shoes and jacket, and Anko following.

"Get back here! Get back here!" she was shouting.

"Yeah, right," Paul muttered. His voice was not what Temari expected: it was slightly whiny, even on the nasal side. He sounded on the verge of being terrified.

"Fine! Go! What do _I_ fucking care?"

"I guess you don't."

"Don't _what?_"

"Don't care."

"Go! Go, then! I don't care! I don't care about _you!_"

"I bet you don't."

The door flying open, and then slammed close. Temari heard Anko's muffled cry of rage as she stomped back into her room.

It was later, when Temari was telling Gaara about her job at the sex store that Gaara revealed that Paul was an ex-boyfriend who still slunk around every once in a while.

She and Gaara were out on the balcony, enjoying a welcome change in the weather.

She accepted a cigarette from him and stuck her bare legs out through the bars of the balcony railing. In the little summer dress she wore, she felt like a little girl, bare knees exposed to the sun. "That can't be healthy," she said.

The wind had picked up and Gaara's eyes were closed, head tilted back, his fading red hair blowing in the breeze. There was a moment of silence, and then he said, "What? Sorry?"

"I've never heard of anything good coming from fucking the ex."

He shrugged. "I try not to meddle."

Temari's first day at the sex store had been a quiet day, mostly consisting of Sharth (whose first name was apparently Deborah) testing to see if Temari could handle the register and inventory. The first day was always about learning the stock and the system. Most of the customers, however, were interested in asking for Sharth, speaking to her in low voices, and then being led back into the mysterious back room. The back room intrigued Temari. Behind the dark red curtain was a poorly lit hallway with two doors. One led into the stock room, where Temari was allowed to go, and one led to the back of the store, where she wasn't. What Sharth and her customers did behind there Temari could not guess.

"Maybe she pushes," Gaara said to her when Temari had told him. "This isn't much of a junk neighbourhood. Maybe people around here need a connection."

"Do people still say'junk'? Are we beatniks?" she had replied. "And yes, Gaara, this _is_ a shitty section of town."

Temari wanted to shower after work, and had bumped into Anko on the way. She was a young woman, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, with short shoulder-length hair and thin lips. Temari smiled and said hi, but Anko glanced away, murmuring something that maybe, barely, was a greeting. She pushed past and vanished quickly into her room.

Maybe she's shy, Temari thought.

When she had gotten out of the shower, Gaara suggested they all head out and celebrate at a bar. Temari remembered Shikamaru's band.

2

The bar was a tiny, grimy venue. There had been a small line-up outside, mostly of women smoking furiously and laughing with drunk thuggish big guys. Temari had never understood the dynamic of these sorts of couples: the contrast between the fish-faced young women in make-up and club clothes and bleached hair and their big boyfriends, stalking about in baseball caps and stained t-shirts. They both probably spent a lot of time sighing at the strangeness of the other sex.

Anko was the only one of their group in club-clothes, a shimmering low-cut thing and slender jeans. Gaara looked rumpled as usual, Naruto dressed like a hipster, and Temari just had on her leather coat and whatever clothes she still had after the fire. Compared with them, Anko was the one that stood out. While waiting outside, she would frequently take out her cell phone, tap at it and purse her lips in annoyance. The more the conversation went on, however, the more Temari got the sense that Anko was pointedly ignoring her. Now what is that all about? she thought. It was wasn't as if she'd done anything to piss Anko off…

Inside, the bar was extraordinarily dark except for the occasional flashing lights from above, and the lights on the amateurish improvised stage at the front of the dance floor. It was small place, and a small stage, with sheet metal put up behind to reflect light back. Temari had been to hundreds of venues like this; the shitty bar yearning to be a club.

At first she figured the place was going to be standing-room only, but by some miracle a few metalcore-looking kids were vacating one of the couches lining the walls, so their little group snagged one. The bands weren't playing yet, but the music over the sound system was still appropriately ear-destroyingly loud.

"You're the one with the new job!" Gaara shouted at Temari, moving close to her. "I'll buy you a drink! What do you want?"

Temari was irritated at the way his breath on her neck sent electric signals down her spine. "Fuck, I don't know!" she shouted. "You getting a beer?"

"Yes!"

"Get me whatever you get!"

Gaara vanished into the tangled lights and the darkness, heading towards a bar far too shadowy for its own good.

Farther on the couch, Naruto shouted something at Anko that Temari couldn't make out. In the flickering light, Anko's expression was distorted; she was reacting negatively to what Naruto was saying, or at least Temari thought so. As Naruto got up, Temari saw that Anko was looking at her cell phone, looking angry at it. Her grimace was revealing itself to Temari in a series of staccato flashes. Strobe lighting was _never_ flattering.

The band came onto stage before the moment could become awkward. There was Shikamaru, checking his guitar, looking sweaty and muscular. He flicked his hair back and Temari felt herself bite down on her lower lip. Jesus, she thought.

When the band started playing, Temari realized they might be in for a long night. The band's sound was somewhat punk-ish, but the lead singer had one of those high mumbling voices that seemed popular with teenie pop-punk bands these days, and the instrumentation was all one big mass of sound. Okay, she thought, maybe it's just the one song. Hell, maybe it's just the sound system. But is this the sort of stuff they're letting people play in tiny alternative venues like these? This sounds like it should be on some fourteen year old girl's iPod.

Gaara returned with her beer. It was a dark ale, which Temari didn't always like, but it was free beer and who was she to complain? He shouted something at her.

"What?"

"I said, _why'd_ we come to listen to these guys again?"

She laughed. "I _know!_"

Gaara grinned at her, and turned back to look at the band. The lights flickered suddenly brighter and Temari could see Anko glaring, like straight-up _glaring_, at her. It was only for a moment, and then the light system swiveled again, plunging their little couch into darkness.

Temari was stunned. What the fuck was _that _about?

As the first song came to a close, heads started to turn. As the last notes of the guitar faded away, another sound was rising up. Some of the band members were looking out into the darkness, trying to discover the source of the sound but probably blind from the lights blaring back at them.

Temari squeezed her eyes shut, wanting them to adjust to the darkness, then peered away into the black. She could see a scuffle.

Gaara obviously had better eyesight than her. "It's Naruto," he breathed, and scrambled to his feet.

3

Temari had done a lot of crazy shit in her life, and had been around a lot of crazy shit, and so she realized with some surprise that this was the first time she'd ever seen someone get forcibly ejected from a bar. The doors opened, exposing the dark of the bar to the bright streetlights outside. Naruto's mouth was working, spittle forming on the side of his lips, and the bouncer's muscles strained, bulging noticeably with the effort of lifting the little Asian kid up into the air. The bouncer's hands released, and Naruto's feet raised upwards, the soles of his shoes lifting skyward, and his yellow hair flying downwards.

As Naruto slammed into the sidewalk, rolling, Gaara shot out of the bar at a full run. He reached Naruto as he staggered to his feet.

"You fucking _faggots!_" Naruto shrieked, unable to get free from Gaara's restraint. "You shitty neoliberal faggots! You liberal sodomite goddamn pieces of shit! You throw me out for speaking the truth! _Believe it!_"

Temari watched him rock back on his heels, suck in breath and then scream, "_Believe it!_" again.

"It's okay," Temari said to the bouncer as she passed him. "We've got it under control, we've got it under control."

The bouncer was a gigantic guy, almost wider than he was tall, with an acid-head's grey beard and balding hair. He looked at her like she was dirt under their shoes, and then closed the door behind her.

She passed by the gazes of all the other girls outside, all smoking their cigarettes in their little dresses.

What are you girls even _doing_ at a place like this? she thought.

Naruto was seated on the curb, palms planted on his eyes. His shoulders were moving; he looked like he was crying. Gaara stood beside him, looking at Temari with a puzzled and angry expression on his face.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I have no fucking idea," Gaara replied. Moving closer to her, he whispered, "I didn't think it was even _possible_ to get thrown out of a shithole like this."

"What did he _do?_"

"Who the fuck knows?"

Annoyance reared up; Temari could feel it snarl in her abdomens. She realized that she had harboured a fantasy of talking to Shikamaru after the show, and taking him home with her, or back to his place. It was a fantasy born out of pure sexual frustration, she knew, but she was disappointed even so.

"Naruto," she said softly, "you want a cigarette?"

Slowly, as if trying to control some vast passion, Naruto whispered, "Yes."

When she came over to give him the cigarette, she could hear him say, "Jerks" quietly to himself. And then, "Jerks," again.

Tomorrow, she thought; tomorrow I'm going apartment hunting.

4

Later that night, much later, when they were all in bed, Temari woke up at around three, still immensely drunk. As she turned, taking in the blue shadows of the living room, and feeling the discomfort of the couch, she heard a low, pulsating moan coming from the other room. Oh _no_, Temari thought; not tonight. Why tonight of all nights?

Temari was rarely driven by sex. She knew a woman's sex drive increased the further you thundered down life towards your forties, but she liked to think her sex drive was nice and normal, flaring up occasionally, but usually keeping an okay simmer during the dry periods. Since her life had burnt down around her, however, she might as well have been an alley cat. Anko's noisy sexual adventures next door were _not_ helping.

She got up, stumbling drunkenly towards the bathroom. Take it easy, she thought; splash some cold water in your face or something. The only other option, it seemed, was to fall into despair and resentment for her life crumbling apart, and that wouldn't help anyone.

It was just as loud in the bathroom. Anko had apparently invested in the kind of bed-frame that could slide back and north into the wall easily and noisily. Sitting on the toilet, Temari was struck by just how awkward and strange it was having to listen in on another person's sex life. She had lived in places before where neighbours would do this frequently, but never before had she felt so astonishingly voyeuristic.

Anko was a noisy one; her gasps and moans were strained and tightened, like each one was tapered by a whipcrack. You had to visualize it, with noises like this: Anko's face, contorted as if with agony, her nipples hard as a rock, some (hopefully chiseled) guy taking her from behind. Temari placed her ear next to the wall and astonished herself by starting to masturbate.

Good Christ, this is all kinds of deviant, she thought, as she tried to adjust her own rhythms to the sound of Anko's noises and the deeper, huskier gasping of whatever dude she had. Soon she was thinking of the tanned muscular Shikamaru, especially as he was up on stage, silky and sweaty.

Good looking band, she thought. She forced her hips upwards, feeling the blood rush upwards to her face. Shitty music maybe, but good looking.

A knock at the door.

She flushed, hard, wanting to scream at the intruder. Goddammit to hell, she thought; no privacy in this goddamn apartment. It takes me long enough to cum when I use my fingers; I don't need _this_.

Gaara's voice: "Temari?"

I'm still drunk, she thought, suddenly embarrassed; I'm drunk and that's why I'm doing something this wildly anti-social.

She got up and slipped over to the door, opening it slightly. "Yes?"

"Going to be out of there soon?"

Will he notice how flush my face is? she thought. "Uh, yeah I'm done now."

"I need to get in there."

She slipped past him.

As he was about to close the door, he turned to look at her. "Do you want to know why Naruto got tossed out of the bar?"

"He told you?"

"Yeah, he talked to me before he went to bed." He licked his lips, as if trying to suppress a grimace. "He, uh, he told a girl that he figured he could sleep with her because he knew she wasn't on the pill. She asked him why he thought she wasn't on the pill. He said because she looks too much like a girl, and that everyone knew that the pill was something the Archons invented to put hormones into women to make them more like men so they can work in offices alongside men. And, well, anyways, she was a friend of the bouncer's."

"Who are the Archons?"

"Who the fuck knows?" He closed the bathroom door.

Temari stood in the darkness of the hall, still hearing Anko gasp and twist and moan. My life has gone insane, she thought; it's gone nuts.


End file.
